Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Establishment left joins neocon right in assault on Ron Paul's candidacy in order that its feigned "progressivism" is never put to the test

Introduction by Chris Moore:

In the following article, influential anti-Zionist blogger Philip Weiss, an Obama supporter, makes the argument that even though he thinks incumbent Obama can, will and should win the presidential election, Ron Paul's presence in the horse race challenges what amounts to the corrupt, Zionist-Globalist, warmongering, left-right status quo, and forces "progressives" to ponder their own bigotry, narrow-mindedness, and Democratic Party-tool status by raising issues that otherwise would not go addressed by the left-liberal/neocon establishment.

My question to progressive anti-Zionists like Weiss is, why do you want Obama to win the presidency over Paul? Aren't you aware that Zionist organized Jewry essentially owns the Democratic Party at the national level? Aren't you aware that there are only minuscule differences between the neocon Republican and left-liberal Democrat establishment not only in terms of warmongering, but in terms of their condescending, elitist, and outright neo-fascist world view? Aren't you aware that along with the Zionists, the State Capitalist/Corporatist establishment essentially owns and controls all of the candidates other than Ron Paul? Aren't you aware that average Americans across the entire country of both left and right persuasion have been used, suckered, conned, hoodwinked and all-out defrauded by the neocon-liberal fascist amalgamation?

Hence, a vote for Barack Obama is simply a vote for a Newt Gingrich, only with a (D) next to his name, a slightly slicker delivery with a slightly more effective flim-flam man narrative aimed at a slightly more liberal audience, and a slightly lower chance of starting a war with Iran.

Indeed, all of this begs the question of whether dedicated Democrat voters are truly "progressive" at all, or whether they are simply a gaggle of liberal careerists and self-serving opportunists and special interests, all supported by a base of brainwashed useful idiots being kept in a smug false consciousness of self-righteous, pseudo-humanitarianism by their wealthy establishment social, intellectual and material string-pullers.

To Weiss' credit, at least he hasn't stooped to that level yet, and is willing to support Ron Paul far enough to put all "progressives" to the test in the general election -- which is far more than can be said for most of the Big Government-racket, "humanitarian" frauds and moral cowards that comprise so much of the left.-----

I’ve been pleased to see several progressives making qualified defenses of Ron Paul in the last few days, and I wanted to join in. The most important point about Ron Paul’s campaign from a progressive standpoint is that it might politicize the militant American policy in the Middle East. Americans will get to argue this openly. That is why the Washington Post is slamming Paul--it doesn't want that to happen. That is why the New York Times has conflated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and white supremacism--to marginalize Ron Paul's ideas.

Imagine for a moment that Ron Paul is not there. And that Mitt Romney, or Rick Santorum, or Michele Bachmann, gets the Republican nomination and it's him/her against Barack Obama. Who is going to be framing an antiwar position? None of them. Obama's big donors are pushing an attack on Iran and Romney's Super Pac is pushing the same and Santorum and Bachmann's Christian Zionist friends are pushing war.

Ron Paul represents the opportunity to push an antiwar agenda inside the center-ring political system. His candidacy might actually force Romney and Obama into more antiwar positions. If he disappears, that prospect all but vanishes. An attack on Iran might actually be in the balance. On the other hand, if he sticks around, we might have a presidential debate in which candidates openly dispute aid to Israel, an attack on Iran, and what Paul has called apartheid conditions on the West Bank, with honesty no other candidate is capable of...

There is a larger political challenge to progressives in Paul's movement. He has a populist movement behind him that seems to have a couple of good ideas. Can progressives engage populists? What class and cultural divides stop us from doing so? Is this a blue-state/red-state issue, or a working and middle class issue? And what is the public-square role of progressives? Are we only in Zuccotti Park? Are we so intolerant of American political processes that we will refuse to engage, holding our nose or not, to try and shift a popular movement? I'm not telling progressives to engage with social conservatives or Tea Partiers-- but Ron Paul has embraced the great Bradley Manning and denounced the Patriot Act.

And if you deny the importance of red state populism, then what is the progressive political program? With our books and our websites, are we just elites staking out righteous positions and not dealing with the vast ignorance of the American people on any number of issues? In that sense, the question of engaging with Ron Paul is the question of whether you believe in the messy business of American politics, in organizing the kind of people who may have to go serve in those awful wars, in bands of public opinion that you can either loftily disdain, or hear out...

One way Paul is unbearable is his whiteness. His movement seems almost entirely white, and there is the white racism in his past. But these are not skinheads. And the issue is: Can progressives engage these people? Can they learn anything from Paul's radical economic agenda? And while you are judging that racism, look at the role of Zionism in progressive communities. The casually-racist statements about Arabs that are absolutely routine in my community. "Arabs and other animals"-- chapter title, Erica Jong's bestseller, Fear of Flying.

Or look at this: Obama campaigns with Eric Yoffie, who doesn't want "too many Arabs" in Israel. Yoffie didn't say that in the '90s. He says it now, all the time. And Obama goes happily to AIPAC, which all but sponsors ethnic cleansing.

You say promoting Paul is dangerous. Here is my insurance policy. Ron Paul will not win. He can’t. Our society is so constituted that if the media elites don’t get him, the mainstream voters will. He’s too eccentric. “Erratic,” as the CSPAN callers like to say. His economic positions (not his foreign policy positions) are the ones that are way outside the mainstream. He won’t win. In the meantime, the further he goes the more he will politicize foreign-policy issues. Myself, I will almost certainly follow Tony Kushner's imperative at the Nation Institute gala last month, to support Barack Obama. I'm going to have to hold my nose to do that. In other years I've voted for Ralph Nader and Jesse Jackson; but I don't think I'll have that option this year...MORE...LINK